Caught Wave-handed.

It was a great evening for baseball. The days' rain gave way to clear, cool skies, and instilled Sunday laziness a day early. And so, I went to the game last night. While the score was 2-1, in the top of the 5th or 6th, fans in the leftfield corner tried to start a Wave. Now, I've recently posted a nice, long rant about the improper use of the Wave. I was warming up a live rant for this one, when I spotted the culprits--Braves staff, attempting to kick-start the misdirected cheering. Go figure. Fortunately, the wave never made it past the larval stage, dying out against the batter's eye. I think the weather made folks too lazy to bother. And then, we started scoring in the 7th. The third time through the lineup proved bountiful, and a few runs and hits furher limbered up the crowd, who had apparently awoken during the stretch. With our team at bat, a new Wave started in its correct context; given a decent lead, an initial, weak Wave limped around the stadium, and that weak showing acted as a fuse for a shockwave the likes of which I haven't seen in years. It was as if Turner Field was invaded by folks who knew what they were doing, and it was beautiful. Reverberating, echoing, cheering, the shockwave rattled Reds' relievers enough for Mark Kotsay to swat a two-run double, and Matt Diaz to swat a deep sac fly to center (a rare productive out for this year's team). Three RBI in all. Hats off, folks.

posted at: 03:10 | permanent link to this entry

Turner Field: 19th-best?

Metroblogs Atlanta Has a post questioning the wisdom of an SI report which ranks "The Ted" 19th out of 30 MLB stadiums. I don't have (and don't plan on getting) a Metblogs login, so I'll comment here. 19th is rather easy to achieve, once you factor in... It's Sports Illustrated. They're New Yorkers, that's -2 for any Atlanta venue. It's Sports Illustrated's website. List whoring rules provide -1 for any legitimate venue, to generate "discussion", and nipple-rubs for the marketing weasels. Dauler or whatever "jesters" are in our ear today. -1. Mega-Jumbotron, Stupid Jumbotron games, and associated corner displays. -1. Doctrinal use of noise machine. -1. Aramark. -1, though the junk food has improved this year. Investigation is in progress. So, if the Baseball Gods descended to Earth, and sent the appropriate people down river (sorry, Columbus!), then we'd rank in the 15th range or so, and that's only because New Yorkers and web lists are regularly full of themselves.

posted at: 02:35 | permanent link to this entry

Today's topic for discussion is:

Q: How do you confuse a Hawks' bandwagoneer? A: Wear a Kelly Johnson jersey to the bar.

posted at: 01:02 | permanent link to this entry